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If you wished for a Broadway show or Debra Messing's return to the stage — or both — when you blew out your birthday candles, you're in luck. Messing will star alongside fellow TV favorites Andre Braugher and Enrico Colantoni in Noah Haidle's Birthday Candles on Broadway. Stay tuned for information about Birthday Candles tickets on New York Theatre Guide soon.
Birthday Candles is a play that follows Ernestine Ashworth (Messing) from her 17th to 101st birthday. She bakes a single birthday cake in that time, the same way her mother taught her. Matt and Kenneth (Braugher and Colantoni, respectively), two boys who first admired Ernestine as teenagers, are the only other constants that remain. Everything and everyone else in Ernestine's life changes as she grows older. She changes from a headstrong, rebellious teen into an adult with a fairly conventional, family-oriented life, and she reflects at every stage on what makes life fulfilling.
Haidle is making his Broadway debut with Birthday Candles in New York. Detroit Public Theatre originally commissioned the play in 2018. Vivienne Benesch directed the premiere, and she will return to direct the Birthday Candles Broadway production. The Detroit production was acclaimed in the Detroit Free Press as "quietly profound" and "one of the most satisfying and moving new plays" in Detroit at the time.
Kate Hopgood will provide original music for the show, and the rest of the creative team includes costume design by Toni-Leslie James, set design by Christine Jones, sound design by John Gromada, and lighting design by Jen Schriever.
Experience Birthday Candles on Broadway and join the party! Birthday Candles tickets will be on sale soon.
(Photo courtesy of Polk & Co.)
Debra Messing returns to the stage as Ernestine Ashworth, who spends her 17th birthday agonizing over her insignificance in the universe. Soon enough, it’s her 18th birthday. Even sooner, her 41st. Her 70th. Her 101st. Five generations, dozens of goldfish, an infinity of dreams, one cake baked over a century. What makes a lifetime…into a life? Birthday Candles is a poignant new play as fearless in scope as it is tremendous in heart.
March 18th, 2022
May 29th, 2022
March 18th, 2022
American Airlines Theatre
By: Noah Haidle
Director: Vivienne Benesch
Producer: Roundabout Theatre Company
Cast list: Debra Messing (as Ernestine Ashworth), Andre Braugher (as Matt), and Enrico Colantoni (as Kenneth), alongside Crystal Finn (as Joan/Alex/Beth), Susannah Flood (as Alice/Madeline/Ernie), and Christopher Livingston (as Billy/John)
Design: Christine Jones
Lighting: Jen Schriever
Costume: Toni-Leslie James
Sound: John Gromada
Other info: Original Music by Kate Hopgood
Sugar. Butter. Flour. Those are the building blocks of a good cake but also, according to Birthday Candles, the treacle new play on Broadway by Noah Haidle, a good cake is also "atoms left over from creation. Look deeper and you'll find the story of the universe." That's a lot to put on a cake, and like an overbeaten cake, the play inflates with potential before ultimately collapsing in on itself, being filled with nothing but air.Birthday Candles stars Debra Messing in an impressive acting...
Two years ago, the company of Birthday Candles was preparing to debut the play on Broadway when the pandemic ground theatre to a halt. Now, they've picked up right back where they left off as though 2020 was mere seconds ago, and Birthday Candles is going up at the American Airlines Theatre on March 18. Neither the cast nor playwright Noah Haidle initially knew whether Roundabout Theatre Company would reschedule Birthday Candles at all, making those two years feel like forever. But in...
Your wish has come true! The complete cast for Roundabout Theatre Company's Broadway production of Birthday Candles has announced its full cast. After its original premiere date in 2020 was delayed, Noah Haidle's play will begin performances at the American Airlines Theatre on March 18 ahead of an April 10 opening.Nearly all the previously announced cast members from 2020 will remain in their roles, with Debra Messing leading the cast as Ernestine Ashworth. Enrico Colantoni will also star as...